


All Along

by Inner Voice (inner_v0ice)



Category: Gokusen - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Illustrated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2011-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-22 02:17:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inner_v0ice/pseuds/Inner%20Voice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not like a movie or a book or any kind of romance you expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Along

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hakuen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hakuen/gifts).



> Based mostly on Season 1 of the drama, with slight influences from the manga.

**Prologue:**   


                    

  


* * *

  
**  
All Along   
**   


  


* * *

It should have been a dramatic moment. She had bid a tearful farewell to her students on graduation day, letting the precious fledglings fly free and stretch their wings! She had fondly imagined the day, someday, when she might see them again: all grown up, the pride and joy of their parents and employers. The tears she and her students would shed on that day! The embraces they would exchange!

Instead, it was just Sawada on the riverbank on the way to school. He was napping on the grass like always, and it was so ordinary and familiar that Kumiko walked right past him with an automatic “Good morning, Sawada! Don’t be late!”

Pause.

Blink blink.

Back up.

“SAWADA! What are you doing here?”

“First day of school at Shirokin today, right?” Shin asked, ignoring her question.

“Yes, but Sawada—“

“I wonder what kind of kids they’ll give you this year,” he mused. “Probably another bunch of unruly guys. They’ll fight you as hard as we fought you at the beginning.”

“That’s true,” Kumiko sighed, distracted from the matter of Shin. She drooped where she stood, staring mournfully off into space. Then she took a deep breath and shook herself, feeling the fire roaring up inside her again.

“I made you guys understand, and I can make these guys understand too! If I did it before, I can do it again—a _thousand_ times more! As many times as my students need me to!” She clenched her fist in determination.

“Well, good luck, Yankumi.”

Shin offered her one of his small, crooked smiles, then bobbed his head in farewell and walked away without a second glance.

“Sawada…” Kumiko murmured, staring after him in bemusement. Then she stiffened and blinked in surprise. “Wait—Tokyo University isn’t anywhere near here! That means…you came here just to… _Sawada!_ ” Her eyes filled with tears, and she dashed them away with the back of her hand. Her precious students were so _wonderful!_

She set off running for the school with tears in her eyes, a smile on her face and a song in her heart, ready to take on the new schoolyear!

* * *

It should have been an opportunity to be a heroic champion for Yankumi—no, _Kumiko._ If he had been Shinohara, she would _definitely_ have thought he was heroic.

He ran into the boys in a café near Shirokin (where he was absolutely _not_ hanging out in case he could get a glimpse of Kumiko passing by. Nope. Certainly not). They piled noisily into the booth behind him, complaining loudly about “that weird teacher” and trying to outdo each other in making up insulting descriptions of her.

Shin scowled and turned to glare at them. “Oi!” he said loudly, cutting through their complaints. They glared back, standing up out of their seats.

“What the hell’s your problem?” one kid spat.

“Butt out! This ain’t any of your business!” another growled, trying to loom threateningly over Shin.

“You’re insulting Yankumi. That’s _definitely_ my business. You guys don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Yankumi? What the hell is a Yankumi?”

Shin ignored this interruption. “Yankumi is— I know you guys think teachers are your enemies. I know you think you can’t trust them. But Yankumi is different.”

The boys just sneered in reply. “You’re one of her old students? And you’re still sucking up to her after graduation? That’s _pathetic_. What the hell did she do to you to get you so pussy-whipped?”

Shin shoved himself up out of his chair with a growl, then reined himself in abruptly, crossing his arms. “You know what? It’s useless. You idiots won’t get it until she pounds it into your head.” He shrugged one shoulder. “We didn’t get it either at first. But mark my words, she _will_ make you understand.”

He grabbed his backpack and turned to go, then stopped abruptly. With her bizarre talent for dramatic timing, Kumiko was standing in the door of the café. She was gazing at him with a starry-eyed expression, and Shin felt his heart skip a beat. _Damn._ Having her look at him like that…

Yankumi being Yankumi, she chose that moment to shatter his illusions.

“Sawada!” she cried joyfully. “Such a passionate defense of your beloved teacher!”

( _Damn._ Shin’s heart sank.)

“I knew that you guys would come to understand the precious bond between teacher and student some day!”

The boys behind Shin were snickering and cracking dirty jokes about “bonding” between teacher and student, and he didn’t know if it made it better or worse that he pretty much wanted them to be true. (Only when the teacher was Kumiko, of course!)

He forced himself to shrug and act casual. “You’ve got your work cut out for you with this bunch, Yankumi,” he drawled with deliberate indifference, walking past her towards the door. “Good luck with that.”

“Thanks, Sawada!” she called after him. He could hear the grin in her voice, and he allowed a tiny smile to curve his lips as he walked away.

* * *

If Shin had ever imagined seeing Kumiko first thing in the morning—and he wasn’t saying he had—then he had definitely not imagined it like this.

She was _adorable_ in the morning; that was undisputably true. Her hair was a sticking-out tangled mess; she pouted adorably as she tried to blink the sleep out of her eyes; her pajamas were the tiniest bit too big for her and hung almost to her fingertips.

Shin just wished he didn’t have to share the gorgeous sight with this bunch of snot-nosed little punks.

Yup, Yankumi’s new students had (once again) gone and gotten themselves into trouble, and Yakumi had (once again) gone and fished them out of it. This had got to be some record, though, of the deepest shit that any of Yankumi’s students had managed to get into so far. Not only had she called up Shin in a panic at 1 a.m., asking him to help her round up the entire Class 1-D, she had declared that it wasn’t safe for any of them to go home yet and had put them up in a spare room at the Ooedo Family compound. Not even the most vicious and vindictive small-time criminals would dare to take one step past _this_ place’s threshold.

So here he was, seeing Kumiko’s morning face for the first time, over a breakfast table overrun by unruly brats laughing and wolfing down rice and poking fun at Yankumi’s weird morning hair. He resisted the urge to either strangle the little punks or thump his own head on the table.

Okay, so maybe he had thought about seeing Kumiko’s face in the morning when they woke up together for the first time after…you know…sleeping together. (Oh, God, did he really just think that?)

And it would have been perfect because then _he_ could have teased her about her weird morning hair, but in a flirting kind of way, and she would have laughed and maybe kissed him.  
(Oh, God, he _did_ just think that. He needed someone to kill him and put him out of his sappy lovestruck misery. Tetsu would probably be happy to oblige.)

Shin sighed and went back to his breakfast. At least the food at the Ooedo House was always delicious.

**Author's Note:**

> (SLIGHT EDITING IN PROGRESS, sorry -- there's a second half whose formatting is still being beaten into shape!)


End file.
